It’s Homecoming weekend at the University of Illinois and I’m participating in the Fortieth annual Alumni Marching Band. I was in the first band back in 1971 and I’ve only missed two of them over the years. Unfortunately, there’s one alum who has been to every one of these and always beats me out for the door prize. I’ve been photographing these things for the last dozen or so years. This is an image from rehearsal of the part of the trombone section.

I like gargoyles, it’s just that I’m used to seeing them perched high above. So I can only assume that this guy came down for a drink of water or whatever and will be on his way back to his usual haunts soon.

Another image of my shadow. I’m on the right (with the camera bag). The shadow on the left is Ned, my friend the poet. The nice thing about shadow portraits is that you don’t have to try to avoid a cheesy smile.

The title of this post makes no sense without the back story. I was out last fall capturing images to be shown in a slide show during a performance of Liadov’s ‘Enchanted Lake’ by the Southwest Symphony Orchestra (one of the organizations that allow me to play the French Horn). The Chicagoland area isn’t the best place for photographing lakes, enchanted or otherwise, but, with a little judicious use of fog filters and such, I managed to pull it off. I also made this image, which didn’t qualify as enchanted, but I like the colors.

The title is a massively convoluted pun (or something close to it) that isn’t worth explaining because it needs too long an explanation and doesn’t have that great a punch line except to me. This image is the second of the <=> series.

Another ‘Things that amuse me’ posting. I was walking along, camera in hand, when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a clump of brilliant orange flowers in the distance. Well, they were orange, all right, but they weren’t flowers. Since I had gone out of my way to get to them, I captured an image anyway. With a little editing, I could replace the plastic flags with marigolds or something, but I may as well just go out looking for the real thing.

This is an image I made of Allan Dennis and Dale Clevenger for some publicity for the Kankakee Valley Symphony’s concert on Sunday, Sept. 25th. Dale, the principle horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, will be performing the Mozart Horn Concerto #3 and this photo was taken at rehearsal in the warm-up room of Olivet Nazarene University’s Centennial Chapel. The concert will be on the stage (of course) and I hope to get some good images there.